To all the little fishys out there, y’all will know just what I mean when I tell you that today’s discussion will cover the “Roommate Agreement.” Oh you can’t recall what that is? Here, allow me to jog your memory. It’s that over-sized, official-looking form handed out to each of us by our overattentive loving RPLs. The one that 97% of you glanced at haphazardly upon receiving, maybe chuckling a bit as you made a mental note to never fill it out. That one random and obscenely large slip of white paper strewn across the top of your microwave that you’ve been using to catch dust and coffee drips.
Oh yeah. That thing.
Though a most assuredly well-intentioned idea, the Roommate Agreement’s marginally militaristic and awkwardly phrased questions are, in fact, pretty useless. Allow me to point out a few examples and then make some suggestions for more helpful drafts in the future.
The first section is titled Sharing of Personal Belongings. It is composed of a list of items, next to which each roommate much check if the item can be used freely, one must ask first, or if it may not be used. The types of things listed start out as rather benign, like microwave and refrigerator. Later down the line, however, one encounters more controversial objects, such as computer, cell phone, and bed. I wonder how many students had to complain about their roommates borrowing their beds for that to become a crucial addition to this list…What kind of argument could possibly justify that? Did you get lost on the way to your own bed? Was your bed broken? Is that even possible?
Real items that should be on this list (because sharing is caring): weed, answers to the Math 350 homework, boyfriends (I kid, I kid).
The next section I’d like to address is Room Cleanliness and Hygiene, particularly the latter part. Obviously it’s important to agree upon when trash needs to be taken out and how often dishes are cleaned, and in case President Paxton decides to drop by for tea, how often we make our beds. However, I find particularly probing the part where we specify how often we are to shower or bathe. For one, the only tub in my building is located in its own eponymously named chamber, which takes on the appearance of a sterilized murder scene. Secondly, I am a grown woman. I think myself capable of deciding when I need to clean my own body. Yet, the school administrative and counseling departments seem to have other ideas. On the other hand, if you were by some catastrophic misfortune to find yourself paired with a sweaty, hydrophobic primate who saturates your tiny room with toxic bodily gases, I could see how this question could become a useful tool to bring down the hammer on his or her heinous habits.
Real sanitation issues to agree upon: picking knots of shed hair up off the rug (or consequently not dropping them there in the first place), not leaving mystery leftovers in the communal fridge for weeks on end (there’s no room for my Chobani and it smells like a small animal crawled in there and died).
The final section of interest is called Guests & Visitation. This has potential for being the most important of all the nine parts (nine parts?!?!) of this form combined. Why? Because the agreement on the components of this section will make or break your relationship, and determine the course of the next eight months. It is here in these details where you will determine your true boiling points: how often you will tolerate being sexiled to sleep in the bathroom, how many room raves it will take to realize that if you wanted to live in a club you could have saved 60K and moved to Miami, how long you can go without a single sweet moment of solitude in your own space. This category is to be taken very seriously.
Real ground rules to demand: I don’t want to walk in on you, so for the sake of both of us, send me a warning text at the very least. Also, I deserve compensation for my sacrifices. Preferably in the form of a pumpkin muffin from the Blue Room.
So, kids, fill out these contracts, and be sure to treat them like the legal documents they most certainly are. If the code is breached, be sure to talk it out face to face. Or get one of your enthusiastic RPLs to mediate. Or conduct it over skype from across the country if confrontation just isn’t your thing. Either way, make sure that your agreement is respected if you want to avoid being stuck in an 8×8 with your worst enemy.
P.S. Administration is serious about the candles. If signing like five different times in your own blood really, really swearing not to bring them isn’t enough to convince you, Res. Life also has claim to your first born if you don’t comply (it’s in the fine print, the clever SOBs).
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